Weird Vermont Temperature Contrasts A Hallmark Of Early Vermont Spring

Traffic camera image from Route 7 in Bennington Monday
shows no snow on the ground, part of the reason why
temperatures were able to rise to 56 degrees there. 

 Whether or not you had a true springlike day in Vermont Monday really depending on where you were. 

Down in places like Bennington and Brattleboro and Springfield, temperatures under sunny skies reached the mid-50s so spring was definitely in the air. 

Up by the Canadian border, not so much. Highs barely struggle into the mid 30s in some towns, and the few inches of snow that fell Sunday night didn't entirely melt. 

In between the two extremes, the north and the south, Vermont had a pleasantly enough mild March day, but it wasn't hard core spring. 

These kinds of weird temperature extremes in the Green Mountain State happen frequently in the late winter and early spring. You're going to see a little more of that today, too.

MONDAY WEIRDNESS

Part of the reason there were such temperature contrasts in Vermont came up in a post I filed last week.  . This time of year, frigid air - lingering winter - often stays firmly in place over the vast frozen forests and lakes of central and northern Quebec. 

If winds are light northerly, a thin layer of that cold air can bleed southward into far northern Vermont, so places like Highgate and Alburgh and St. Albans and Newport can occasionally get that frigid Quebecois feeling in early spring. 

That's what happened Monday. Newport only managed a high of 36 degrees Monday. 

Meanwhile, daytime temperatures, especially on sunny March afternoons, depend greatly on what's on the ground. 

Still a good amount of snow on the ground around
my house in St. Albans, Vermont Monday, part of the
reason why high temperatures never got out of
the low 40s during the afternoon.

Bare ground absorbs the sun's heat, and thus warms the air in the lowest couple thousand feet of the atmosphere. Those places would be noticeably balmier than places that are snow-covered.

There's pretty much no snow left on the ground around Bennington. So, the sun was able to heat things up nicely, which is a big part of the reason why high temperatures there on Monday was 56 degrees.  . 

Southeastern Vermont, around Brattleboro and Springfield, does still have some snow on the ground, but that snow is thin with plenty of bare spots  A northwest wind Monday also helped the air warm up. 

When the air flows down the slopes of mountains, in this case the southern Green Mountains, it compresses. Compressing air tends to warm up. Which meant the valleys of southeast Vermont also enjoyed some mid-50s  in the afternoon

Central Vermont was in a sort of unaffected middle. There's still plenty of snow on the ground in most of the area between Route 4 and Route 2. So the sun's heat reflected off the white snow cover. Which means it couldn't get quite as warm as it would have with bare ground. Also, some of the sun's energy went into trying to melt some of the snow rather than heat the atmosphere. 

However, that cold air from Quebec wasn't able to bleed southward all that much, so none of that Canadian chill could make it as far south as Route 2.  

The end result was a happy medium with highs well into the 40s. Montpelier had a high temperature of 46 degrees Monday. It probably resulted in a decent sap run in the sugar bushes, so we can't complain about that. 

TODAY

Strong south to southwest winds will briefly bring temperatures well up into the 50s to near 60 statewide.

An exception to the warmth will be right along the shores of Lake Champlain. Those southwest winds will pick up the chill from the icy waters of the lake and blow it ashore Places like Burlington's Waterfront Park will be stuck in the 40s at best for most of the day. Meanwhile, communities a few miles inland from Lake Champlain will be flirting with 60 degrees this afternoon.  

These lake breezes will often keep the immediate shore of Lake Champlain cooler than other areas well into early summer at least. 

Large scale storm systems are still strong this time of year too, so those bring sharp changes in temperature. 

A cold front will turn our balmy Tuesday of near 60 degree weather to a subfreezing shiver fest for Wednesday afternoon. Then, we're still expecting that massive storm in the Midwest to pump us right back up into the 60s again this weekend.

Those are the typical wild temperature gyrations we expect out of a March and April in Vermont.   As always, expect a wild ride and some surprises as we move through the first part of spring.